The lights flickered as the chill swept the empty flat. Shallow shadows haunted the bleak walls as I sat rocking back and forth thinking over philosophies and ideologies, trying to think of something profound and life-altering. But nothing comes. I want to write, but cannot think of what is worthy to force the ink to paper. It’s nice, neat blank computer paper. So clean and crisp, like 1950s laundry. An image flashes of red a la Hitchcock’s Marnie. My mind goes directly to the tips of my fingers. A stinging, sharp pain and flowing red.
Never mind the paper. There’s ink or maybe lead. But lead can be erased and what would the point be. At least with ink there will always be some sort of blot, possibly used later by a psychoanalyst on rough times. Books lay like dead butterflies scattered across the carpet. All hopes and dreams of efficiency are dashed. A couple sentence fragments turn into newly illegible cross-outs into a sketch of a chair into new bin lining. The conundrum of the seemingly educated writer; nothing reasonably good seems innovative enough, in this vast world somebody has done exactly what someone else is contemplating. Nothing is original, even in questioning worth of self and one’s prose has become passé. What is the purpose of writing if not to explore new avenues of thought which have been circled around endlessly for centuries? It seems that I will never have a truly original thought and have set forth to write no more.
But I have to write to live. I cannot live without self-expression, no matter how self-indulgent. Oh damn if I am cliché or passé. I will write no matter the possible paper cuts or mental blocks. I am what I am and the world is my oyster.